So, say you’re a defensive midfielder, sitting on a yellow card, against a team that’s just better than yours. You know you need to engage in some morally grey areas in order to level the playing field, but that yellow card really prevents you from doing anything to below the belt. What do you do?

If you’re Diego Chara, you take a look at Diego Rossi’s ear-flesh, and flick the crap out of it. For no real reason, either. You just run up behind him and snap at his ear with all the precision of Mark Wahlberg manning a .50 cal sniper rifle in Shooter.

At what speed do you think Chara’s index finger flicked Rossi’s fragile lobe that he managed to simultaneously shatter all of the bones in the Uruguayan’s body, catapulting him forward and rendering his limbs useless? That’s like one step down from the Five Finger Open Palm Exploding Heart Technique.

A sending off is never useful, per se, but there are certainly more and less useful red cards to be...